Facebook Friday – The Decline of Organic Reach [VIDEO]

In this episode of Facebook Friday, we discuss the decline of organic reach that businesses have been experiencing since Facebook changed the News Feed algorithm. This recent change has been impacting businesses large and small. Get the scoop here.

We have close to half a million likes and we went from thousands of likes and shares to double digits only. It’s incredibly frustrating and scary at the same time. This is in February so apparently, the upward trend has not affected everyone. Do you have any updated info?

I work for a non-profit and our posts are only reaching 4% of our fans. We have not seen the January uptick that you mentioned–it’s been a steady decline since late November, from a 643 reach average to 354 so far in February. It feels like Facebook has done the old Bait and Switch on us.

I have noticed this really badly in the last couple of weeks. I started our content marketing strategy and have been producing content our page subscribers would like and engage. Our organic reach all of the sudden got cut in half. It was fine from Dec 25th to Jan 6th, then the last week or so it just dropped. We plan on putting money towards posts, but I wanted to have a good measure to know how well our content is working first. Less people are seeing it, so less people are engaging it.

I’ve also seen a sharp decline. I’m currently only reaching 30% organically. I already pay to bring people to my page and I promote select posts. On paid posts it says I’m reaching way over my reach but I don’t see my normal people commenting on those so I have to wonder if they’re even being shown them.

I’m spreading my advertising dollars out to other sites to reach my readers. I just can’t throw money at something that isn’t working.

We are in the same boat Mandy. Our reach for December was the largest in all of 2013 but the interaction is one of the worst months for the same period. I’m hoping that the changes we saw start last week are a sign that they have fixed something and we can go back to a more normal level.

Our Facebook reach has dropped dramatically. I’m an author, and have about 9000 likes on my page, and organic reach is down below 20% now. And I WAS doing some paid posts but the people who liked my page were not seeing the paid posts. I’m moving over to other platforms because I am convinced the advertising I was doing on FB is not going to work well.

Our radio station fan page has over 54K likers – we were averaging 100-200 new likes per day in October, November and the first two weeks of December. Since Dec 13, we have averaged less than 30 new likes per day, and actually had one day where we had a net decrease in likes! Our reach and engagement have decreased commensurately.

Our twirlygirlshop Facebook postings have seen a radical drop in organic reach. Making this even more absurd is the fact that we already advertise on Facebook to get people to like our page. Now we have to pay again to get those people to see our posts?!? It’s ridiculous! Thank you vertical response for taking up this fight. I hope you/we prevail.

Thanks Michael. I’m more worried about our small business clients. If we are seeing such a major drop then I can only imagine it’s worse for them. The good news is ours has come back a bit over the last 10 days but I don’t want to get too excited until the trend sticks. Have a great one.

I have seen a similar result. I’m an author, I only have about 400 “likes” on my fan page. My posts often go out organically to only 20 to 40 fans. When I get above 40 Facebook congratulates me and wants me to promote the post. However when I “boost” or “promote” or whatever I have so many problems. Often FB comes back and tells me to raise my budget. When I do raise my budget nothing happens. No promoted posts, nobody sees it, nothing. Once or twice I would put this up to my ineptitude but it’s happened about three times now, with increases in budgets, and nothing is happening. (Maybe you could do a post on the trick to getting your promo to work!) I think I may be done with my fan page. (But here it is just in case you want to see it: https://www.facebook.com/LiseMcClendon

Thanks for the input Lise. I think everyone is seeing the same issues whether you promote your posts or not. We have seen some improvement over the last 10 days so I’d love to see if your are experiencing similar results. Let us know. I will sit on the post on FB promotion until I’m sure it’s actually working the way Facebook says it should.

Yes. We’ve seen a sharp decline since the start of December. We post for two of our clients using Bufferapp so it’s too easy to see the massive drop in reach. Looks like it will have to be promoted posts from now on.

And again, this illustrates how important your strategy must be to use social media to get email addresses so YOU own your contacts and can contact them as you wish with email marketing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought it was our posts for the sharp decline. I’m so frustrated that my organic views have gone down from an average of 180/day to 32. We are a very small communication company and post daily tips. I thought maybe our content was the problem. I didn’t even know about Facebook changing their algorithm. Please keep us posted on this. I spend hours on gathering content for such small results.

It’s not you Joyce. The good news is I think they have tinkered with the algorithm. We saw the first week over week increase in our organic traffic from Facebook in more than 7 weeks. We’ve also seen more interaction in our individual posts. Are you seeing the same?